Okay, so we come back together to have a talk on the Dhamma and do group meditation.
And we'll continue today with a discussion of the Mangala, the blessings.
So the Mangala, just to recap, these are things that, these are those things that protect our practice.
that dispel all evil, dispel all dangers, and dispel all difficulties in our practice and in our lives.
Manga, manga are things that are evil.
And la is that which dispels them and destroys them.
So the next one in the order is, the next stanza that we have is Garo voja ni vato voja santutthi ca gathanyuta karenadhamma savanangetamangadamutma Garo vo means respect, ni vato means humility.
Santuti is contentment.
Katanyuta is gratitude.
Kalena dhamma savanam.
Listening to the dhamma at the appropriate time.
Etamangalamutamang.
These are the greatest blessings, or highest blessings.
These ones are very much a description of the meditator, or a description of an enlightened being, the enlightenment of the Buddha and the Arahants.
And it's important to understand them.
Otherwise, we think of them simply as some tradition or some cultural baggage.
And we hear respect, and we think, well, this is just the sort of thing that you would expect from a religious culture, where they have to pay respect to each other.
You have to bow down to someone.
means respect in general, and the Buddha had
a list of things that we respect in Buddhism.
This is the Buddha.
So we have our utmost respect for the Buddha, the enlightened one who has laid down these teachings, who has discovered these teachings and passed them along to us.
We have utmost respect for the Dhamma.
This is the teachings that he's passed on.
We have respect for the Sangha,
This is the enlightened disciples of the Buddha who have continued the passing on of the Buddha's teaching.
We have respect for the training, the training itself, the practice that we undertake.
We have respect for heedfulness,
and we have respect for hospitality.
These six things are the kinds of respect that we
try to cultivate in the Buddhist teaching.
So it's actually quite an array of things.
In general, just to put it in brief, respect means to take things seriously, to not play games or to think of this as some sort of game or something, to think lightly of those things that are worthy of respect.
So you see, when we practice meditation, the first thing we'll do is a paying respect meditation.
In one sense, we do this mindful prostration.
In one sense, you can think of it as actually paying respect to the practice.
It means reminding ourselves of how important this is.
And so we actually pay respect to the practice as a practice.
So going in order, we have respect for the Buddha.
This was obviously more important when the Buddha was alive, and it's something that would be of utmost importance for someone who's following the Buddha.
But even today we can see how important it is to know who the Buddha was and to understand what an important person he was and how important his life was to us.
and to understand the importance of the nature of Buddha.
Because, of course, this gives us a figure, a role model, a leader to follow, and someone, as you find in any religious tradition, someone who new meditators can cling to as they pull themselves up.
and who old meditators can take as an example and strive to maybe not reach the level of attainment of the Buddha, but at least to strive to act according to his instruction.
So we take everything the Buddha said seriously.
We take his injunctions seriously.
We take his rules and regulations seriously.
And we take the practices that he taught seriously.
We take the Buddha himself quite seriously, that he was someone who
is worthy of remembering, someone who is worthy of respect.
And so actually in Buddhist countries they will bow down to the Buddha image as a means of paying respect and remembering the greatness of the Buddha.
Mainly because this creates, this cultivates wholesome qualities in the mind.
It creates faith, not necessarily in the Buddha, but confidence in what you're doing.
The idea is not to create some kind of faith that the Buddha is going to save us, but it creates confidence in the fact that the teaching we're following was laid down by someone who truly knew the nature of reality, was able to understand it for themselves, was able to see through the delusion, to see through the illusion of
concepts and understand ultimate reality, to understand the true nature of reality.
Someone whose mind was perfectly pure and someone who had great compassion in teaching, who spent an incredible amount of time developing his perfection so that he would be able to lead.
The Buddha was our leader, and in that sense he is a very important person.
because of how difficult it was for him to develop that.
The fact that what he did was something very difficult to do, just to be able to lead people.
When the Buddha became enlightened, one of the first things he thought was that he wouldn't teach because he saw how difficult it was.
He thought to establish his religion and to establish a community of practitioners would be incredibly difficult.
It was only through being asked and being reminded that surely there would be some people who could understand and who could practice according to his teachings.
Did he change his mind and accept the invitation and set out to teach those people who were willing and able to listen?
Respect for the Dhamma means respect for his teachings, respect for the practice, taking the practice seriously, not simply practicing when it appeals to us or
when it is convenient, but trying to practice the rules and the Dhamma and the Vinaya all the time and as best we can, fulfilling, bringing the practice, bringing the training, bringing the Buddha's teachings to fulfillment.
Never looking down upon the teaching.
Looking down upon the Buddha and looking down upon the teaching, this is something that we take quite seriously.
And so you have to be quite careful when you're criticizing the teachings that we have laid down, because if we develop in our mind the view that this teaching or that teaching is not right or not what the Buddha taught or so on or not correct,
then it can be equivalent to saying that the Buddha was wrong.
I received a correspondence with someone today who explained to me that something in one of the suttas was incorrect, something quite core and central to one of the suttas, and said it's not correct to say that in the sutta, and he assumed it must have been a mistake.
Immediately I thought in my mind that this is quite a dangerous position to hold.
Because basically what you're saying is what is presented as the Buddha's teaching is not correct.
It shouldn't be taught like that.
And so why we have to be very careful with this is not because we want to be blind, we want to have blind faith in these things, but because we simply don't know ourselves.
And we can't claim that we ourselves understand the truth of things.
And so we should be very careful when we criticize what is presented as being the teachings of a fully enlightened being, unless we're pretty, pretty sure and have done a lot of self-reflection.
And meaning in the sense that we have come to purify our own understanding first.
Because 99% of the time when we criticize someone else's teaching, it's because of the
the defilements in our mind and the misunderstandings in our mind.
We can misunderstand a practice or we can be attached to our own cultural practices or the practices that we've become accustomed to, and those practices can be wrong, those ways can be wrong, and so we find ourselves criticizing.
another teaching or we criticize a sutta even, criticize the suttas, criticize the vinaya, criticize the commentaries.
Even criticizing those ancient commentaries on the Buddha's teaching is very dangerous because it might very well be
how the Buddha meant it to be.
And just because it doesn't agree with our idea of how things should be doesn't really mean that much.
Because of course we're just one more commentator and we're in far less of a position to comment than these ancient commentaries, for example.
But we should be very careful not to cling to our views.
We should be respectful, even if we don't maybe even agree, because our lack of agreement doesn't make these things wrong.
The Buddha taught us to let go of our views, to let go of our opinions and to follow along.
according to the teaching that's laid down, to see the truth, to practice in a way that conforms with our experience, rather than how we think things should be.
So the teaching here is very important.
And it's important not to have a light mind about it, that it's something that we can take on when we want as a hobby and give up when we want.
Or to let culture, for example, get in the way.
So here we're often confronted with this conflict of trying to separate what is Buddhism and what is culture.
And whereas we want to be able to fit in with the culture when we're
confronted with it.
It can happen that the culture actually conflicts with the Buddha's teaching and then we have to be very careful to be able to separate and to take quite seriously and have enough respect for the Buddha's teaching to keep the Buddha's teaching even when it flies in the face.
of some culture, as best we can.
Of course, there may be times where we simply can't, due to laws or so on.
We can't go off and live in the forest in a country where such a thing is illegal or so on.
But for the most part, the Buddhist teaching is very simple to keep.
There are very few, if any, examples I've found that
make it impossible to practice.
But it will never accord perfectly with any culture.
Because all culture comes from the idiosyncrasies of human beings.
So in the end, our practice as Buddhists will have to come out of society and come out of culture.
This is why we have to build up forest monasteries and so on.
And out of respect for the Buddhist teachings, we do come out of the culture.
We shouldn't try to conform the Buddhist teaching or adapt the Buddhist teaching to a culture for the purposes of being able to practice or being able to live what we think is the Buddhist teaching inside of a society, for example.
We have to come out of our society, come out of our culture in order to embrace the Buddhist teaching fully in an ideal situation.
Of course, lay people, ordinary people living ordinary lives can incorporate the Buddhist teachings into their lives.
But out of respect for the teaching, we should never try to adapt the core teachings.
We can just conform to the teachings as best we can while living our lives.
We should understand that the teachings themselves require us to take them on with our whole heart.
And the third is the Sangha.
This is paying respect to the enlightened disciples of the Buddha.
You could even say it means paying respect to the unenlightened disciples of the Buddha, those people who have passed on the theoretical teachings.
But most important here is to be very respectful to those people who have practiced and who seem to have gained some sort of attainment in the Buddha's teaching.
We should have respect for such people.
We should try to learn from them and we should try to take them as an example.
Number four is respect for the training itself.
So this means respect for morality, respect for concentration, and respect for wisdom.
We should never look down on any of these.
There are some people who will look down on morality and say, you don't really need to be a moral person, you just need to practice the teaching.
Morality is only guidelines or so on.
So people will actually take alcohol or will
be rather loose with even the basic and fundamental precepts.
and they won't really understand the true benefit of morality and the true necessity of it.
And so they can be considered not to have perfect respect for the teachings.
Some people actually look down on concentration and will say that all you need to do is to see clearly.
You don't have to sit in meditation.
You just have to think about and ponder on the Dhamma and try to realize the teachings in your daily life.
And so they'll look down on the idea of practicing meditation.
Others will look down on the teachings on wisdom.
not understanding or thinking it to be intellectual activity, to think that the Buddha is teaching on the Abhidhamma, for example, or on ultimate reality.
as some kind of later creation, or that it's not really necessary, that one should just develop concentration, and the concentrated mind will lead one to enlightenment.
So they don't have the respect for the Buddha's teaching on wisdom.
or they don't have an understanding of the true wisdom, and they think that wisdom and concentration are very much intertwined.
And so they wind up developing great states of peace and calm without going the next step for wisdom.
And these are just to point out that we have to avoid all of these extremes.
We have to be careful to have great respect for morality.
The Buddha said we should find fear in the slightest fault.
Even the minor fault, we should see the danger in it.
Because there are many rules and regulations that, on the face of them, don't seem to be immoral.
The using of money, for example.
In a monastic community, monks aren't allowed to touch money, aren't allowed to buy things, aren't allowed to even hint or ask for things.
And people will think that this is, at least the using of money would be quite actually a convenience for monks.
And it's certainly not directly immoral to touch paper and plastic and metal coins and so on.
There's nothing intrinsically immoral about it.
And so they won't have this kind of respect and you'll find monastic communities that actually do use money and so on.
But what you'll find is that in such communities there is a real busyness that ensues where the monks are holding bank accounts
working to gain money or even having salaries and working and even to the extent that they're fighting over money and arguing and bickering and engaging in actually evil pursuits in order to gain money.
And so out of respect for the community, out of respect for the communal harmony, and out of respect for the purity of the Buddha's teaching, we keep even these seemingly harmless rules, because there are many benefits to them, apart from just the benefits to our practice.
They have many communal benefits.
and they have benefits for the purity of the Buddhist teachings so that people, when they come to see the monastic community, they're able to understand correctly and they don't have wrong ideas about the monastic community, that monks can have jobs or that monks can drive cars or that monks can wear lay people's clothes or so on, these kind of things.
They will be able to understand that these are really and truly people who have left society behind.
respect for concentration, we should have respect for meditation practice.
The word may not be concentration, you can think of it as focus.
Focus means we have to focus our minds.
We can't expect to become enlightened in daily life if we don't seclude ourselves, if we don't focus our intentions, focus our mind, and keep our minds from, or restrict our minds
the range of the mind.
We have to restrict the range and keep the mind focused on the four satipatthanas.
I've said this is like our pasture.
This is our corral.
We have to restrict our minds to this.
So this means taking the time to do mindful prostration, to do walking meditation, to do sitting meditation, taking the time to restrict your activities.
And rather than trying to develop mindfulness as best you can while doing ordinary activities, we have to come back to very simple activities, walking back and forth, sitting still, even lying or standing meditation.
to restrict the range of the mind and to keep it as simple as possible, so that we can begin to learn from very basic principles.
Respect for wisdom means we have to have respect for the goal of the practice.
We can't be content simply with states of peace and calm that come from the meditation.
We can't be content with
the bliss of seclusion or the happiness that comes.
People will even become content just by being monks and content with living in a meditation center, be content with the peace that comes from living in this place.
They'll become content with their own views and opinions and so on, and they won't be willing to give them up.
And so we have to be able to go the next step to find wisdom
How you know about whether you have wisdom or how you recognize the wisdom is that wisdom is what changes the mind, what changes your behavior.
It doesn't just augment or support our views and our opinions and our ways of behavior.
Wisdom is never content.
wisdom is the parting from our old ways, parting from our conditioning.
So it's something that should surprise us and should really make us reflect and make us change, rather than simply reassuring us in our ways.
This is where the Buddha was talking always about impermanence, suffering and non-self.
These are things which are very shocking when you actually see them.
The realization
that what you're clinging to is impermanent, or that you're clinging to things that are impermanent.
Because during the time that we're clinging, we don't realize that we're clinging until we see that we're clinging, and we're able to let go of it.
respect for the heedfulness, respect for appamāda.
This means respect for mindfulness.
It's a little bit different from the respect for the training, which is the training in morality, concentration and wisdom.
This means respect or taking seriously the moment-to-moment practice that we do to develop morality, concentration and wisdom.
The only true way to develop these things is not through reading books or through taking on practices or through walking back and forth or through reflecting, but it's through moment-to-moment mindfulness.
If we're mindful and we're mindful from moment to moment to moment, the morality is when we bring our minds back to the present moment, when our minds have wandered and we pull them back or our minds want to wander and we're able to keep them with the present object.
It's when we...
This is morality.
Once we're able to keep the mind with the object, this is concentration or this is focus.
When the mind is clearly aware of the object.
And then the clear awareness of the object, the understanding of the object, the seeing the object simply for what it is, this is wisdom.
So the way to develop these is moment to moment to moment.
And it's to be mindful of
every moment.
And so the respect for this means to be guarding it, as we might take care of a sleeping child, guarding our mind.
And for a moment, we're not letting our minds lose the rhythm of the practice.
So every moment, watching our minds to keep it on track.
And number six is just an important reminder by the Buddha to have respect for hospitality.
When new people come to be hospitable and to show them to their rooms and to teach them how to practice and to...
take care of them while they're here and so on to be hospitable to visiting monks and to be hospitable to visiting lay people and to this is something that we have to remember as a community that when people come to visit here we have to respect and welcome them to our community Buddha said we should always think that may those may those
well-practiced individuals who haven't come yet, may they come, to be keen to have new people practicing in the right way.
And for those people who are practicing correctly, who are maintaining the communal harmony and the peace, and who are practicing the teachings wholeheartedly, may they stay, may they continue here.
So this is what it means to be respectful.
It means to take these things seriously and to take our practice, most of all, to take our practice seriously.
Niwata actually relates to the core of respect.
Niwata means wind.
Wata is air.
And ni means out.
So it means not full of hot air.
Niwata.
It's a word that means humility.
And so on the face of Garo, when you think of Garo, it's respect.
So it means having respect for each other and respect for other people, for our seniors and for our teachers and so on.
And so in that sense it goes along with niwata, which means humility.
But niwata in particular is the giving up of conceit and the giving up of pretenses, the giving up of some fake sense of righteousness, that I am right and I know the truth and so on.
To give that up and to be humble and to be accommodating
and to be able to give up our views and opinions.
Nivata, as a meditator, is most useful for relating to one's teacher.
One should treat one's teacher, the Buddha said, like a fire.
like the sacrificial fire, because if we cultivate it and if we keep it burning and are respectful towards it, then it will bring us great benefit.
The Hindu people would believe that by keeping the fire going, it can help you go to heaven.
It can lead you in a good way, or it can even lead you to enlightenment, they would say.
So in Buddhism, this is our sacrificial fire, is the teacher.
It's the person that we respect and we cultivate, and we care for, or it just means that we respect.
So this is how it has to do with Garo.
But when relating to your teacher, it's very important to have niwata, to not be full of pretentiousness, or to think that you know everything.
And to be willing to consider the fact that you might be wrong, even when you disagree with your teacher.
And also to put aside your prejudices as well.
Because it may be, if you think of the case of Sariputta, Sariputta took several people as his teachers who were actually very inferior to him.
in the sense that when they taught him something, he would respect them.
He would hold up his hands in anjali and respect them.
There was a novice once who pointed out to him that his robe was crooked.
He let his robe slip down, and one corner of it slipped down, because monks have to wear their robes even all around.
And it was just as he was walking.
Of course, he was about to lift it up, and the novice caught him first and said, Honorable Sir, your robe is hanging down.
Sariputta adjusted his robe immediately and held up his hands to the novice.
and said, thank you, teacher.
That's the story that we have.
And so we have to be humble.
We can't try to press our views strongly on other people.
This can cause problems.
But when we have a teacher,
or when we are living in a monastic community, for example, and there are rules and regulations, then we can't be full of hot air
go against these or stubborn about them, going against the rules and regulations of the community or the rules and regulations of the Buddha, stubborn in our resistance to the Vinaya, stubborn in our resistance to the teachings.
This is the case often when people come to practice meditation and we tell them to do walking and sitting, we tell them to use this mantra or this word to be mindful, to continuously practice, and then we'll give them various stages of practice.
And it often comes that there's a conflict in the meditators, that they want to practice in a different way.
Some people want to practice at the nose, and they'll say they're not comfortable practicing at the stomach.
Some people don't want to do a lot of walking meditation, and so on.
And there can arise a great amount of hot air building up inside, righteousness, feeling that you...
the feeling of resistance to the teaching.
And this is dangerous for the student.
The best thing is when we take a teacher, that we go along with the teaching.
When we come to a meditation center, that we follow their way.
The Buddha said when a new person comes to, when a new monk comes to a monastery, they should learn about the
rules and regulations and even the customs and traditions of that monastery, and try to follow along with that community, seeing how does that community behave, how do they practice, what are their rules and regulations, and so on, and try to follow.
So actually there's two levels of this.
There's the communal harmony, but then more importantly is the practice.
Most important is that when you take a teacher, you have to have respect and dedication to their teaching.
And of course towards other people.
Another level is just to the people around you.
So when we're in a monastery, we shouldn't try to hold ourselves up above others that we're special in some way.
We should all pull our weight in the community and try to, or in the meditation center, we shouldn't go about trying to teach other people or explain to them what is the right way of behavior.
If someone takes us as their teacher, then this is pot and kosher and correct.
But we shouldn't go around thinking that we know the best and therefore we can teach everyone and so on.
which often happens, especially in large meditation centers.
People will go around picking on the other meditators.
Meditators will come, and new meditators will come, and the old meditators will go around bothering them, really.
And then sometimes you'll get five or six different meditators each telling them different things.
And then they'll come to their teacher and say, all these people are telling me different things and what do I do?
It's very important in the meditation center to only really follow one person.
And it's very important for us not to try to go out of our way to teach people.
Whoever that person is reporting with, then they should go to that person for advice in the practice.
Of course, it doesn't mean that if people do come to us for advice, technical advice, then it is proper for us to say, well, if we know the answer and if it's a technical answer, to just say, well, walking meditation, you're supposed to keep your eyes open, for example.
If someone says, should I keep my eyes open in meditation?
You can say, yes, yes, you should, because we know these are things that we know.
but going around trying to impress your views on the other meditators.
This means in a communal sense, when we're meditating somewhere.
You see this in Thailand sometimes, it's quite noble actually, where senior monks will come.
I had a senior monk come, he was the head of a district, and he came to practice and he was sent to practice with me because our head teacher was busy.
And he actually wanted to bow down to me.
In the beginning, he didn't even let us know that he was the head of the Ampur, the head of the county.
Until I asked him, I said, how many years have you been a monk?
He said, like 25 or something like that.
I said, oh no, please don't bow down to me.
I shouldn't be bowing down to you.
I mean, as a teacher, it is possible to allow for that, but I don't think it would have been really proper.
There was another case where there was this one monk who was just an old monk, and he came to chanting every morning, very quiet, and stayed to himself.
Just seemed like some old monk who was from Bangkok or something.
And then this other monk who was a bit of a loudmouth, he came, and he's a very outspoken monk, and he's actually quite famous, I think.
He came to visit the monastery as well, and he announced in the chanting, he said,
You know, this is amazing.
Here we have this monk here.
This guy is the head of...
He was some very, very important monk, very high up in Bangkok monastic hierarchy.
I think head of a kate or something, head of a Bangkok district.
One of the very high monks.
And he said, here he is, totally not even letting us know who he is, coming to practice meditation.
And I thought that was quite nice.
These are good examples of when we go to a meditation center to just follow along and do our thing, practice, and not try to stand out or so on.
Niwato.
Santuti is number three.
Santuti is a very good one.
It's very important.
It's something that we always have to remember as meditators.
Remember it on many levels.
Santuti means contentment with whatever you get.
Contentment with your robes, contentment with your food, contentment with your lodging, contentment with medicines.
So robes, you see many people have commented on the fact that I've changed my robes.
Well, my old robes had worn out, so I needed new robes.
And these are the color of robes that they wear here, so I changed the color of my robes.
Being content with whatever is available.
Even the Buddha said we should be content with rag robes.
Of course, in modern times, rag robes are actually more difficult to find.
In Buddhist countries, anyway, rag robes are more difficult to find.
I would say in general they're more difficult to find.
Because when you do come across cloth that has been discarded, it's generally cloth that has some sort of flowery pattern on it or something.
or else it's synthetic and it's some pink or blue synthetic that you can't dye.
It's very rare to find cotton cloth that can be dyed some dark color that's appropriate for a monk.
Not like the Buddhist time when everything was just simple cotton cloth.
And so we're content with whatever robes that we get and they're very easy to find.
Content with food means
to be content with alms food.
Be content with whatever we get on our alms round.
I often, for myself, I try to just stick with whatever I get in my bowl.
I think that's a good practice, to not even go to the kitchen and look for extra food, whatever you get put in your bowl, to just take that.
There was a story in the Jataka, it's a really good story.
It's something that I don't think as monks we can emulate, but just to show how much contentment is possible.
The Bodhisatta was born as a
as a dark-skinned person in particular.
And this was important for the Jataka because the way he lived was just under a tree or deep in the jungle.
And he made a determination to just be completely content with whatever he got.
So he wouldn't move from his sitting mat.
He wouldn't move from where he was.
He would take whatever was within reach.
If leaves fell on the ground, he would eat the leaves.
If there were little shrubs growing, he would eat the shrubs.
If there were mushrooms, he would eat the mushrooms.
Or whatever came from the tree, maybe he would reach up and pluck some leaves off the tree.
The idea was to just be completely content with whatever was most easy to find.
So maybe he would get up, and of course he'd have to get up to go to the washroom to relieve himself.
But he would just take whatever was in the trees around him, leaves or flowers or berries or so on.
And so anyway, the story goes on to how the king of the gods came down, and Indra came down, or Sakka came down, and
said to him, oh, look at you black guard, you dark person, and living like this, what do you hope to accomplish?
And he said, I'm not dark.
There's nothing dark about me.
Here I am living a perfect light life, a life of brilliance.
Then he said, you can't judge people by the color of their skin.
And the Jataka goes on.
It's a very interesting story and very inspiring because Indra becomes, Saka becomes so impressed with him, he offers some wishes.
Okay, I give you a boon.
I am the king of the gods.
Whatever you wish for, ask and I will give it.
And his wishes are things like, may no being be harmed by me.
This is the wish that I have.
May I be perfectly content and never have any evil wishes.
Never have wishes for anything greater than what is most easy to find.
So this was the bodhisattva.
This was the practice of the person who later became the Buddha.
And it was through cultivating contentment in this way that he was able to become a fully enlightened Buddha.
So to some extent we should try to emulate this, to take whatever it is that we have, to not be concerned, overly concerned with our health or with the quality of our food, or to be concerned with the calorie intake or protein intake or so on.
If you think of these examples of the Buddha or even enlightened disciples who went off and lived in the forest and would eat very, very minimal food,
When we were at Jomtong sometimes, as I was talking about before, sometimes all we would get on alms round would be sweets.
And so, whereas normally you'd want to pull the sweets out and you'd take just the stuff that is really nutritious for you.
So that would end up taking out all the sweets and all the really fatty stuff and deep fried stuff and sugary stuff.
Now it was, which sweets are the most nutritious?
And so, okay, you're still allowed to separate them.
But now you have to separate from what you have.
And it really teaches you something.
Some days not getting anything on alms round and just being content and living like that.
There was one monk we met in Colombo and he was explaining about alms round in England.
And he has a really good technique of making it clear to people that he wasn't begging and yet gaining people's sympathy so that they would give him something small that would keep him alive.
And so when people came up to him and asked him, what are you doing?
And sometimes they'd want to give him money.
They'd think, oh, here's someone who needs some money.
Maybe he's just standing there and he needs something.
So they would try to bring him money and say, oh, no, I don't take money.
I only take food.
I'm just trying to get my one meal for the day.
And they'd say, oh, and what happens if you don't get any food?
And he said, what I tell them is, then I'll eat tomorrow.
And this was something that, of course, really impressed the people.
It's something that's quite perfect.
You have to be on that level.
You have to be careful that you're not hinting, especially on the alms round, or trying to make it clear to people that somehow you need food or so on.
You can be honest with them and tell them what you're doing, but to say, well, if I get food, I'll eat.
If I don't get food, I'll eat.
Maybe I'll eat tomorrow.
and contentment with lodging.
So we have to be content with whatever lodging we get.
There's something that can be said here for lay people as well, that often we think that we need to get some mansion or the house of our dreams or so on.
You see this, when I was living in America, it was quite a saddening story of how many people lost their homes mainly because of greed.
And it was also on the side of the people who just bought without thinking.
There were people giving away very cheap loans for wonderful houses.
And then it collapsed and the job market collapsed and many people lost their homes because they had so much.
You have to blame it somehow on their greed, their desire to own the house of their dreams.
Not being content with the house that they had or so on.
People buying second houses and then not being able to afford it when they lose their jobs and so on.
So for laypeople this has a very important lesson for us to be content with the dwelling that we have and to be content with very little.
I mean, what you need to live is just, in Zen they say, half-mad awake, full-mad asleep.
This is what you need as a dwelling.
And this goes for lay people as well.
You may need more than a full mat because you need a place to put your clothes and your suit and your work clothes and a place to have a washing machine and a place to have a kitchen and so on.
So you need basic necessities.
What's really amazing is to see how meditators, how lay meditators live, and how they're able to do away with so much of the junk and so much of the luxury in their dwellings that ordinary people have.
But this goes even more for meditators or monastics, people who are undertaking a meditation course.
And it can come up quite strongly for a person in their meditation practice.
During their practice, they'll become quite discontent with their lodging and they'll feel like it's too small or it's too this or too that, the colors are wrong and so on.
They'll become claustrophobic or they'll feel like the monastery is not suitable for them.
the mind will come up with a thousand different problems with your lodging, with the place that you are.
And so contentment is very, very important, much more important for monastics.
There's a story of Sariputta who was coming to see the Buddha, and so he came, and when he arrived at the monastery where the Buddha was staying, he heard from the other monks that there were no rooms available, that all the rooms were full.
And so rather than going and complaining or going and asking someone else to move or so on, because of course he was a very senior and very important disciple of the Buddha, an important person, he was perfectly content to go and he took his robes and maybe he took some branches or something and he set up a tent and just slept under his robes for one night.
When the Buddha found out, he wasn't so happy, and he put this rule down for monks to assign dwellings according to their seniority, or according to their role as well.
So if someone's a teacher, then they shouldn't be moved, because they have to do many duties as far as teaching.
The point is this contentment, and this is the kind of contentment that we need as monastics.
It's the kind of contentment I was saying that we need when we go to Thailand, when we're going to Chamthong, because
We may need, if they don't have rooms there, we may have to stay in a tent or stay in a field or something.
We should be this content.
When we arrive at a meditation center, we should be willing to accept whatever lodging that they give.
If they give us a cave, we stay in the cave.
If they give us a kutti, we stay in the kutti.
So many different problems people have.
Some people will be put in a cave and then be very...
unhappy in the cave and think that they want to be in a luxurious room.
People will be put in a luxurious room with its own bathroom and they'll feel like this isn't proper.
I'm not a real meditator and they want to go live in the cave.
All of this is discontent.
And it's an important lesson for us as monks because we have different ideas.
Some people think, oh, you need luxury or you need your own bathroom, you need your own place.
And they'll think that this is correct to have your own space and so on.
And some people will think you shouldn't have that kind of thing.
You should go and live under a tree or you should go and live in a cave or you should live very rough and simply.
And neither of these is actually what the Buddha taught.
The Buddha taught us to be content with what we have, to be content with whatever is available.
It's like the story of Kanna, the dark-skinned ascetic who is content with right where he was.
It's actually one of the duttangas to be content with your dwelling.
When you go to a monastery, whatever dwelling they give you, you take that dwelling.
When I was in Jomtong, this was a big deal.
We always had to move from one room to another.
When a new meditator came, we would always give up our room.
It's always like, no, no, no, there's no room.
Everything is full of meditators coming from all over the country and all over the world.
And so we would give up our rooms.
The rest of us would find ways and I would often have to go and stay in the office in the computer room and so on.
This is an important Buddhist practice.
So we should never get these romantic ideas that we need to be in this or that space or this or that monastery.
Even you can take this in terms of the need to go off in the forest.
The Buddha never said there is a need to go off in the forest.
He recommended it to us.
If it happens that you have to live in a city or you have to live here or there, to be content is much more in line with the Buddha's teaching than to wish or to be discontent with your dwelling and feel like you have to go off in the forest.
The reason, of course, that the Buddha encouraged to be in the forest is not anything intrinsic.
It's just that in the forest there are fewer people.
It's hard to be content in the forest, so people who have much discontentment will not be able to come and live in the forest.
So we need much more living in the forest.
We have to be content with the rain, we have to be content with the bugs, we have to be content with the dangers of the jungle and so on.
We have to be content with the cold, content with the heat.
We have to be content with all of this in the dwelling.
And finally, we have to be content with our medicines.
This is a big issue with monastics, but I think it's an even bigger issue with lay people now that I think about it.
If you ever see old people, how they start to stock up on medicine, and they're taking medicine for absolutely everything, and they wind up becoming very much dependent on these medications.
And it becomes a very important part of their life to take this medication, that medication, often just for pains and aches, or for lack of a certain vitamin or so on.
which is all well and good, but becomes quite an obsession, becomes quite a requirement.
So now, in the West, as the population is getting older, at least in America, there's a real concern for the ability to take care of people who get sick.
But if you think about it, if people were able to take care of themselves and be patient with it, there are of course many situations where this isn't possible, but there are many situations where it is, and where people are actually, you could say, are taking advantage of the situation, of the programs that are in place to give free medicine and medication and so on, to really avoid many of the problems in life.
So this also applies to ordinary people, that we shouldn't become obsessed with medication.
Equally applies for mental sicknesses.
People will be so quick to label, and doctors will be so quick to label our condition as this syndrome, that syndrome, this mental illness, that mental illness.
So they can prescribe some medication, because really that's the only answer that some people have, is take this pill, take that pill, and it will solve your problem.
So we become very dependent on this.
And as patients, we tend to, or people tend to agree with this and accept this.
What can you give me?
Give me something, anything, to take the pain away.
I remember a funny story, kind of related.
There was a woman I know who...
She got pregnant, and in the weeks leading up to her birth, she was so happy to know that she had decided to have a natural birth, and to not take any medication, any drugs, any painkillers, or anything.
And she said she was going to bear it, and so she prepared herself as best she could.
And she told us later that in the delivery room, she screamed at the doctor.
She yelled, Give me something!
Give me anything!
Knock me out!
And she got really angry at him and really mean with the doctor and saying, I don't, you stupid, or something like this, and swearing at him and so on, and saying, just give me something to take the pain away.
So it's a good example because really we have to prepare ourselves.
Our meditation practice is to prepare ourselves.
There are very difficult things to bear in this life.
And there are pains that we have and sicknesses that we have
But the purpose of Buddhism is not to make a life where you can live without any sickness or without any trouble or difficulty.
It's to be able to deal with the difficulty when it comes.
Because eventually you can't stop it.
Eventually you have a choice to become addicted to some sort of medication or drugs or way of practice, or to just live with it, to be content with what you have.
Now, for monastics, this also applies.
It's easy to find monastics.
Sometimes when you go to different monasteries, you hear all the monastics will talk about is medicine, how they're taking this vitamin or that vitamin, how they're going to see the doctor about this or that.
They can become very obsessed with their health because they don't have much more to obsess about.
There's not much.
They're living in the jungle, and so they become obsessed about their food.
They become obsessed about their lodgings.
They become obsessed about their robes and become obsessed about their...
medicines.
Very clearly this is why the Buddha was laying this down, this contentment.
And in fact the Buddha said, as far as medicines go, we should be content with the most simple of medicines.
Something that would shock most people.
The Buddha taught us that we should be content to use urine as a medicine.
This ancient Indian medicine that nowadays people would think is revolting, and certainly in the Buddha's time it would have seemed to many people quite revolting.
We think of urine as some sort of waste product.
The truth of it is that urine is not a waste product.
It's something that the body has no need of.
When the body uses all of the nutrients from the food, and there's still nutrients left, they become excreted in the urine.
It's something like purified blood, and it does have medicinal properties, one's own urine.
But the point is that this is the ultimate in contentment.
If a person can be content to take only something like urine, maybe not just urine, but something like it, or things that are so easy to obtain,
Of course, the Buddha gave allowance for whatever medicines are used in the country, you can use them.
But the point is not what sort of medicine you take.
Of course, if someone obsessed over taking urine and swore by it and every day was drinking their own urine or something, then you might think this is actually an attachment and a problem.
The point is not what you take.
The point is that you're content with what you have.
And this is the ultimate contentment, to be content with rags for robes, to be content with alms for food, to be content with the foot of a tree for lodging or a forest dwelling, to be content with urine or the most simple and free medicines that exist.
This is being content in regards to morality.
It really has to do with our way of life and our interactions with the world around us.
Contentment in regards to meditation practice.
This is another very important topic for us to bring up because
In modern days, meditators tend to look at meditation like a buffet, and they will pick and choose.
They will try many different things, and they will end up with their own style of meditation, or they will end up moving from one style to another.
And no meditation teacher that I've ever heard from will say this is a good thing.
Again and again and again, every meditation teacher will tell you, stick to one practice.
It's not a buffet.
It's like taking paths up a mountain.
Even if every path leads to the top of the mountain, which they may not, some may not, even if they did, you can't go up one for some time and then go back down and go up another one.
You'll never get to the top of the mountain.
And you should be very careful to not let discontent drive you away from a meditation practice.
Because any meditation practice, any path that you choose is going to be difficult.
It's going to have its ups and its downs.
It's going to have its pluses and its minuses.
There's going to be things that it does emphasize and things that it doesn't emphasize.
You shouldn't be looking for a full range of meditation practice.
You shouldn't expect to gain everything from the meditation practice.
Some people are so discontent that when they find out that they're not going to be learning about past lives or magic or reading people's minds or
or flying through the air, astral travel or so on, and they have no interest in the meditation.
They have some huge expectations of gaining some spiritual result.
Most people when they come into meditation have this to some extent.
So when they sit in meditation and all that they experience is pain and aching and distraction in the mind, they can become quite discontent and they have no interest in practicing.
They feel that there is something very important lacking.
whether it be peace or calm or concentration or some special spiritual experiences.
Some people are looking for pictures, they're looking for visions to arise and so on.
Everyone is looking for something special.
This is discontent in regards to the meditation practice.
We should be content with whatever comes.
And we should be content not only with whatever comes, which is very important, we should also be content with the core of the Buddha's teaching.
The core of the Buddha's teaching is very easy to understand, that no Dhamma is worth clinging to.
This is the Buddha's saying.
This is the core.
This is how you should train yourself.
And it's the understanding of the four noble truths.
It's the realization of the three characteristics.
It's a very clear sort of meditation practice, the four foundations of mindfulness.
And yet we want so much more that is not core.
It's very clear in the Buddha's teaching that magic powers are not core, spiritual experiences are not core, visions are not core, remembering the past or learning about the future is not core, learning how to live your life and getting insight into this or that is not core.
What is core is the realization of the truth that nothing is worth clinging to, and the letting go, and the being content,
with things as they are.
So the core of the meditation practice is to become content with things as they are.
This is the actual practice.
This is the core of the Buddha's teaching.
Now, the problem comes when people are looking for something else in their meditation.
So, first of all, we should be very content with whatever practice we have, as long as it's in line with these teachings, the four foundations of mindfulness and the three characteristics, to see impermanent suffering and non-self, so that we're not clinging to things as permanent, as satisfying, as controllable.
And then we should be content with that teaching, not during the practice looking for more or becoming interested in special experiences or trying to gain some special experience.
Being content in regards to wisdom means being content in regards to whatever results we get in the practice.
This is another area of great discontent for people.
They assume that the wisdom that we're talking about must be some profound intellectual realization where the mind starts to...
develop new theories and new realizations about reality.
The wisdom, Ajahn Chah was this Thai monk who got quite famous, said it the best when he said, this is frog wisdom, the wisdom that we're getting.
It's very simple, very small, very low wisdom that we're gaining.
In fact, the wisdom is the realization, as I said, of rising.
When you know that the stomach is rising, this is wisdom.
Because at the moment of knowing rising, you're knowing impermanence, you're knowing suffering, you're knowing non-self.
You're not seeing that as permanent, because you see it arise and cease.
You're not seeing it as satisfying, because it ceases.
It doesn't go by.
It's not something you can cling to.
And it's not under your control.
You see that it comes and it goes according to its nature.
It's only when you string those momentary realizations together that your mind begins to let go, your mind begins to ease up, your mind begins to find freedom.
So it's very easy for people to become discontent and think that they're gaining nothing from the practice.
They feel like they're not gaining anything.
I gave a talk recently on this.
Someone said, I'm not gaining anything.
I can't control my mind.
These are two very different statements.
You are seeing that you can't control your mind.
This is an incredible realization, a very important realization.
And yet you can still in the next sentence say, I'm not gaining anything from the practice.
This is discontentment.
It is the discontentment in the mind, because the mind comes with preconceived notions of what is wisdom.
It must be something wonderful.
And say, this is it, that's not wisdom.
Where's the wisdom?
And you're missing what is very important.
The realization that you can't control your mind, so you should stop.
You should stop living your life like you can control yourself, you can control other people, you can control the world around you.
You can control things to be exactly the way you want.
This is contentment.
So this is santuti.
The next one is katanyuta, means gratitude.
Gratitude is something that I think many modern meditation practitioners don't realize.
Many do, but you always will get people who don't understand it and think that people do things because they want to do them.
If someone helps me, they do it because it makes them happy to do so.
And that's sufficient for them to make them think that they shouldn't feel any need to do something in return for that person.
But reality doesn't work like that.
The truth, it is true.
They've got it true insofar as when someone does something for someone else, my expectation is that I will become happy myself.
So I'm not really doing anything for you.
I'm doing it for myself in that sense.
But that has nothing to do with how you should react to it.
That doesn't say how you should react when someone does something for you.
When someone does something for you, you have two choices.
You can be grateful, or you can be ungrateful.
You can appreciate the good things that they've done, or you cannot appreciate the good things that they've done.
This has incredible consequences, first and foremost, on your own mind.
When a person ignores the fact that other people have done good things for them and is not grateful for your parents having done good things for you, they wanted to do it, they loved me, that's why they did it.
That's nothing to do with why you should be grateful for them.
The gratitude is the correct way to respond to them whenever anyone does anything good for you.
And so this is something that is incredibly important for us to develop as a mind state.
It creates true peace and harmony in the mind.
Whether it be our parents, our teachers, our friends, our supporters, even the lay people in the village.
I know that often when they give us food, they're just thinking, this will be good luck for me, or this will let me go to heaven.
That's nothing to do with why I'm grateful to them.
I don't think, ah, why should I be grateful?
They're doing it for themselves.
I'm grateful because I've gained something from them.
They've done something good for me.
And that's a wholesome act of my own.
That's my goodness there.
If I'm ungrateful or I think, eh, it's nothing, they did it because they wanted to.
This is stinginess.
This is withholding the correct response.
It's the same as when someone comes and asks you for something.
If someone asks you for something, the correct response is, with wisdom, to, when possible and when correct, to give to them.
It's the same reply that should come when someone gives something to you.
When someone does something for you, you should at the very least feel grateful.
It doesn't mean that you have to think, oh, now I have to do something for them.
Often people try to abuse this.
Meditation teachers will guilt trip their students and try to speak in roundabout ways about how I've taught you and therefore you should do this and that for me.
This isn't what it means.
It means the state of mind that is grateful.
It doesn't mean that you have any obligation towards the person
It means you have the obligation to react appropriately To think kindly of that person Whenever anyone has done something good for you
This is first and foremost on your side.
But there's another important aspect here, is the harmony that it brings.
The harmony that gratitude brings.
The good that it does for the other person.
This person has gone out of their way to do something that benefits you.
And then you reply by saying, well, thanks.
Or have no sense of appreciation for them.
And then what happens is that next time they'll have no inclination to do any good for anyone at all.
This is what comes quite often when monks are ungrateful to the lay people or treat the lay people bad.
The lay people, not that they get angry at the monks, they think, well, you know, he's the monk or so on, but they lose so much of the encouragement and the happiness that they had in giving when the monks are not appreciative, when the monks do not receive the food with appreciation.
The same goes for a teacher.
When you teach and you teach and you teach and people then, you know,
argue with you and so on, or
become disobedient and start picking out your faults and so on, you lose your encouragement to teach.
This is a very important reason why the Buddha decided not to teach.
You realize that it would be so tiring for him.
He knew the defilements that people had, how there would be no appreciation for the teachings.
appreciation which is very necessary to gain enlightenment.
If you don't respect the teacher, if you don't respect the teachings, it will be very difficult for you to progress in the teachings.
You'll just take a little bit and try it out.
And you therefore won't advance.
And so the Buddha saw this and he decided he wouldn't teach.
And it was only when he was invited and he was told that he was requested to teach on behalf of those people who might understand in the world, people who might appreciate the teachings.
And so he taught.
It's a very good example of how at first the Buddha thought of teaching, and then he thought, oh, it's just going to cause so much suffering.
So he backed off.
This comes for us when we teach, and then people are unappreciative.
It's very easy to become discontent.
I mean, often it's because our teaching is not so good, or we're obviously not the Buddha, and I can't teach the Buddha.
So sometimes people will say bad things, and you can feel it.
You feel yourself giving up.
But then you think, well, it's probably just because my teaching is not so good, so you train yourself and you try to be better at it the next time.
But it's very important, very important to be grateful.
Be grateful to people who support us in any way, whether it's by teaching with us or whether it's by giving us material gain.
Even if someone gives you good advice,
There's a story of the Bodhisatta and this woman was just saying something offhand about her son or something like that.
And it made him think that, oh, having children is going to be a real burden for me.
And so he was grateful and he gave her a gift as his teacher.
And so this is this natural act, this feeling that this person is giving me good advice.
When people do that, we should be grateful to us.
It doesn't mean we should feel obligated to give them a gift or this or that, or pay them with money or something.
Just the state of feeling grateful, and that if the opportunity arises, we will be inclined positively towards them.
So katanyuta.
The final one is Kalena Dhammasavanam, hearing the Dhamma on the right occasion, on various occasions, from time to time, you might say.
So that's what we're doing here.
Here we are listening to the Dhamma.
And this is, the Buddha said, a great blessing.
It's a very important part of our monastic life.
As I've said before, it's important that our teachings go in one line.
So in this monastery, we'll try to have our teachings come from the same source.
We'll use the same set of teachings, and then we'll have the same tradition, and so on.
Not because other traditions are wrong, but so that rather than being a buffet, we'll be going up this one course with the same vehicle.
aware that there are other paths and other vehicles, but our vehicle will go to the top of the mountain.
So we should have teachings on the truth from time to time.
We should have teachings in regards to the meditation practice, teachings that will assist us and keep us on track, teachings that will encourage us.
the many benefits of hearing the Dhamma.
Hearing the Dhamma will allow you to hear things that you haven't heard before.
It will allow you to gain understanding in things that you have heard before but didn't quite understand.
It will give you right view when your views were wrong.
And it will make your mind pure.
If nothing else, hearing the Dhamma will make you happy, will make you feel at peace, will help you to give up your attachment,
At the time when we're listening to the Dhamma, we're listening to even stories about the Buddha and stories about the monks, it gives us so much peace and encouragement in our minds that this is a very good thing.
So what I want to say is from now on I'm going to try to have everyone
give talks.
So not just I will be giving talks, but I'm going to try to get the other people in our community to read something, perhaps some Buddhist sutta or Buddhist teaching or to read from a book that they're reading or so on.
And then to give a short feeling on it, what they think of it or how it hits them.
So to not be a teaching, but to be some gift of Dhamma.
Because the point is not the teacher and the point is not the...
The person, the point is the teaching, the point is the truth, that we should hear the teaching from time to time.
Even if we hear the same things again and again and again, this can always be useful.
So I know there are people who sometimes listen to talks on the Internet again and again and again, or there are the people who watch these YouTube videos.
It's great to be able to provide this, and that there are many places on the Internet where people can gain access to various teachings and various traditions.
So what we're doing here is something quite global.
And that's the idea of this as well, is that there will be more than just my voice and my opinion and my ideas coming out, that there will be a variety and a broad base of teachings on what the Buddha taught.
And this is the way that we become, as the Buddha said, savaka.
You have this word savaka, which the Buddha used to describe his followers.
But savaka comes from the verb to hear.
It's the same root as the verb to hear.
So it means those people who have heard the teachings.
And the point here is that unless we're going to go off and learn everything there is to know about the world and realize and discover for ourselves the truth that the Buddha found, then we need to hear these truths from someone who already has.
And this is the Buddha and the Buddha's disciples.
So hearing the teachings from time to time and reminding ourselves about these good things and keeping our thoughts in line and keeping our thoughts focused on the teachings, having other people tell us or point out our faults to us and so on, is a very important part of our practice.
It's really the means of progressing in the Buddha's teaching.
So that's also another blessing.
And altogether these make up another stanza and another group of the Buddha's teachings on blessing in the Mahamangala suttas.
So I hope that this has been useful and that all the people listening here are able to take something away that can be useful in their life and in their practice to help them to gain all of these very positive qualities of having respect and not being disrespectful, to take things seriously that are worth taking seriously.
to not be puffed up or conceited, to not think of ourselves as someone important and therefore to hurt others and to cause difficulty and problems for others.
santuti, to be content with whatever we have and to not be looking for more, even more spiritual teachings.
Another good example is how people are always asking for more videos.
And I want you to be very careful, those people who are out there listening to this, and people here in the monastery who are always asking for more teachings, to be content with the teachings that you have and to put them into practice, rather than looking for more or wanting to study more and more and more.
There was a story in the Jataka
about this monk who just, in Dhammapada or the Jataka, I can't remember, about this monk who, all he knew, all he could remember was one verse.
And whenever he gave a Dhamma talk, he would just repeat this verse.
He would go and sit up on his Dhamma chair in the forest and repeat this verse.
And he was so, he was an Arahant, I believe, and he was so...
had so much conviction when he said it, and was so sure and so in line with this teaching, that every time he said it, the angels in the forest all went, sadhu, and the sound reverberated through the forest.
Every time, so every week on the holy day, he would go up and give this verse, recite this verse, and then I guess lead them in meditation.
And one day his friend came to see him, and
and asked if he could give a Dhamma talk there.
He said, okay, sure, you're welcome to give a Dhamma talk.
He got up on the seat and he gave this long discourse, very intricate and detailed about all of the Buddha's teachings, because he knew very much.
And at the end of the discourse he was silent.
And he was like, why aren't the angels saying sadhu like they do for you?
And they went to see the Buddha about it.
And the Buddha was clear that it doesn't matter if you learn a lot.
It's whether you actually practice and whether you have it in your heart.
So the point is not to learn or to be looking for more teachings and more teachings and more teachings.
From time to time it's useful to remind yourself of these things, but they can also become an addiction and a poor substitute for actual practice and meditation, and they will in the end be no substitute for actual practice.
So I encourage everyone to take these teachings and actually put them into practice, and that you yourselves are able to
find true peace happiness and freedom from suffering thank you for tuning in and wish you all the best